Pila has 3 sections which most folk dont realise, get off the second lift, turn right and roll down the fire road for a couple of miles and you pick up a other lift that takes you all the way to the top where you will find a super death ridge. This gives one hell of a descent a d misses out the mid section in the woods picking up the Aosta run in the village.

There’s more in pila, hard to find though, but on the other side of the road up the hill.

La thuile is superb, don’t bother with Tignes or Val D’Isere. You can also ride from the top of the col du petit Saint Bernard down into la thuile and also from above la rosiere back to bourg.

HEIDI is a cracking ride, from the highest road col in Europe, the col D’Isere back to bourg. That really needs at least one uplift, two ideally.

Also riding over to bozel in the tarentaise valley via la plagne then dropping down to Moutiers for the train back is a good day out.

That’s before you hit up all that les arcs has to offer!

Half the fun is in the planning. If you just turn up without doing any homework you will enjoy yourself, do your homework and it becomes something else. If you have never been just stick to local trails, pila, la thuile and maybe la plagne. That will keep you busy and give you a feel for the place so when you study the map for the following year it will all make sense and come alive!

Enjoy

Breaks are always a dead give away!

second taking the kids to MOSI, that is a good day out! Lego place is a bit meh

Take the wife to the Corrie set if thats her thing as its round the corner from MOSI

KTM Revelator

£2K with the discount code they are offering here, 10/10 in reviews, lovely bike, i have the same frameset just not quite as good spec

They have just closed loads of donor drop ins in Staffs/Cheshire and laid a load of staff off, basically down to less demand these days as ops have changed.

That and blood lasts 6 weeks or which i didnt realise

on the other hand if i had enough to buy a house cash id be moving well out and become an odd job man! How much would you really need to earn if you only had bills and no mortgage? Kind of makes the whole work thing pointless, do something which is lifestyle based over trudging 90mins into london

Cash is only king when buying a house at auction that you cant get a mortgage on. No kitchen, bathroom etc, structural issues etc.

SO if you are prepared to do some graft you could end up quids in.

Otherwise cash isnt really cash, its just money moving from your bank to theirs as a mortgage would, and its not the mortgage which slows the job down in any case, its the useless solicitors so you still have the same issue.

All it does is stand you in better stead if two buyers want a place, in which case you will be in a better position, however if there are two interested parties why would you discount at all?

id second that, keep the old boiler analagy.

We have an Ideal Icos which are renowned for being pretty crap, however they are also damn cheap and easy to fix. A new one on the other hand, £250 for a circuit board thankyou, thats before you even get to the fault in most cases!

I thought i’d nodded off and missed a good chunk having just seen the ambulance bit and the star in the car bit but clearly not!

It’s not in the congestion zone, I asked the same question a couple of months back. We just parked on the road next to the museum and paid the meter, about £4 per hour to 4 hrs then free from 6 or 6.30pm. Its expensive but then so is parking and getting the tube and bits a hassle with kids. Wasn’t really much traffic and it was a Friday evening!

If you can stretch to sidi they are beautiful

My rhubarb flavoured gels arrived today, tested one to aid the hangover and a lot nicer than expected!

Not as bad as a video a Syrian recently showed me!

Just a word of caution, with 2.35″ tyres on you will die, 2.4″ is the minimum requirement for snow!

My last two cars have been diesels (golf mk4 and mk7 accord) but my next one may well be a petrol. There is just too much to go wrong on modern diesels (dmf, SPF, injectors, clutch) and all damn expensive. My wife has always had jap petrols and she has never had to do anything to them, infact of they get serviced once in a few years its good going. The latest is a 1.8 corolla verso with a vvti engine, its chain driven so not even a belt change needed.

Ok mpg is less, but the verso is doing 36mpg with her doing local short journeys 90% of the time, but my diesel would only return 42 doing the same, and petrol is cheaper.

If you are doing high mileage I’d get a new one on finance, if not then a 4 yr old jap petrol at peanut prices would be where my money would go.

Some more amusing Baldwin antics for yousome award ceremony

Manon carpenter looks bloody hot though from her pics on FB!

their words not mine!

hence the weekends club ride having some extra arse protection as everyone is looking at their phone constantly, god knows what at but its terrifying how little attention they pay to the road

Ive spent the last two weeks driving in Kuwait and our roads seem serene. Its madness here, packed 3 lane motorway, doing 120kmph then a dick in a V8 comes up 2″ from your bumper flashing even though you have meerly one cars width between you and the next car so where he thinks he going is anyones guessThey will then gun it fly to the slow lane and cut back in before lamping the anchors on. Its madness.

I wouldnt mind but every day there are smashed up cars at the side of the motorway, they dont get cleaned up like in the UK, they just sit there till someone shifts them so you would think its a wake up call to them. Its bloody sobering to see as some look horrific and i struggle to see how anyone would get out alive but they dont think at all.

There again they have Allah looking down on them so all is safe and well…….

Ill not even go into the super bike riders with the helmets attached to the rear of the bike doing wheelies at stupid speed

well they are heading more Alibaba direction with the amount of tat on there these days, especially anything technology related

Ebay is a joke now. I got restricted permanently from selling due to my rating being below standard. Nearly 50% were items not received, all sent std post as less than £10-£15. Once i replied to say id refund after 14 days and would inform the Royal mail through the proof of postage refund system they have saying that they DO INVESTIGATE, they strangely all got cancelled. But this isnt enough for ebay, as far as they are concerned the item may have turned up after they set up the claim.

Its bull sh1t, they admitted on the phone that a buyer can claim that x number of items havent arrived if sent unrecorded and they will do nothing about it. The system will trigger the buyer if he does it too many times by all accounts but how many free items you can get before triggering it is anyones guess.

Also, they always encouraged communicetion between parties to resolve issues. Now if you go to help and say an item hasnt arrived or is not as described it takes you straight to open case!

Seriously biased to buyers and mega sized companies, in short they arent interested in sellers as buyers generate the revenue…., thets their line, all about the buyer.

Furthermore they dont want private sellers on there, we just clog up the system, they want to be the biggest shopping portal in the world and handle millions upon millions of generic transactions for rubber dog turd from china daily!

The only solution to the OP’s problem is to buy a set of old bombers and not use them on a bike!

look at Sardinia, looked nice last time i looked and there are trails there now i believe, also a proper MTB holiday company is operating there, google is your friend but i seem to remember an article in STW too some time back.

Also, Cyprus maybe? But there are dogs, big ones out in them hills there i believe

Mottram Moor: a new link road from the M67 to a new junction at the A57(T) at Mottram Moor

A57(T) to A57 link road: a new single carriageway link, bypassing the existing A628/A57, and the A57 Woolley Lane/Hadfield Road junctions

presumably to help drivers get past Mottram and Hollingworth

The land to the north of hollingworth has been sat idle for years waiting for this to happen but i believe there is a private estate in the way and no one is going to move a lord on, unless the price is high enough, at least i believe this is the issue

Have you got the CEO’s Have you got the CEO’s email?

Were having a nightmare with sky as they never gave us what we asked for and agreed when taking out the contract. They constantly add things and the bills are getting silly now with TV, BB and Phone.

They must have some of the worst customer Service in the country, id not recommend them to anyone for this reason.

It will be a capacitor, they also have a problem with going off intermittently, this is also a crap capacitor

Dont do it to yourself unless you are single, enjoy full nights in front of a computer and love pi$$ing your mates off!

One of my friends has played it for about 10 years now, he leads corps into massive battles and generally rallies the troops. He has been offered a job in Iceland with it where its based and had Project Management jobs in the middle East offered just by playing it, ut be warned it does and will consume a lot of your life if you go at it.

Im not sure how you can play it seriously and be employed to be honest

Car boot sales can be great too, but you need to be there early. You will be up in good time to get there for 6, plus what else do you do at that time on a sunday morning!

Breast feeding is potentially a nightmare in the making so be prepared for a distraught wife if teh baby wont latch on. We had this issue and my wife was so upset. However the hospital will have a breast feeding lady who will no doubt offer all the help you need and they will/should be able to lend you one of the professional dairy parlour machines if you have any issues so pursue that route before shelling out on one.

Microwave steriliser is a must.

Bottle makers….its not hard to make a bottle, you soon learn 4 scoups plus 90ml water left in fridge topped up with 30ml of boiling water is the perfect combination!

Whatever you decide upon, do yourself the justice and get it secondhand, just get a good one and when the wife decides to have a second or just decide she needs a different one as the one you went for is a pain you can sell it for near enough what you paid for it.

Seriously, think we had 5 too. When the 2nd Jnr B came i allowed Mrs B to choose whatever double she wanted as long as it was second hand! Glad i did, the first was a one in front of the other job and was like driving a limo round a macdonalds drive through, the second was a side by side and so big it filled the boot of an accord, the third was a Mclaren Double and it stayed! Says something.

Incidentally, all 3 of the doubles were sold for more than we bought them for as i got them off ebay where sellers sold collection only and sold with delivery.

Biggest load of crap out there i tell thee!

Just get a McLaren Techno XT and have done

Im amazed these havent taken off!

Or have they but only in Taxi world?

We used to get hounded when we lived in Oldham, literally 5 or 6 would pass by 9am.

Since we moved its not been too bad but i had a call from the wife the other morning to say she had just found someone in the back garden asking if stuff was scrap. She told him politely to do one and got a mouthful back. Duely reported them to the police expecting nothing, only to get a call back shortly after to say they had found them and found the driver not to have a licence so impounded the flat back transit!

One less on the street for the time being

Camp site Le Versoyen is great and 2 mins ride from the fenicular and opposite the supermarket.

Trail addiction will show you around the Les Arcs hill, however White Rooms will show you the stuff further up the valley and get you out and about more. My choice would be WR.

The man made trails are pretty naff ill be honest. If you want to ride the best stuff you either need a guide or be prepared to spend a lot of time with an IGN map, google earth and youtube/vimeo. They are all on the IGN pretty much but you need to be able to read a map well and be prepared to hunt around, they arent obvious a lot of the time but once you get your eye in your laughing.

Ill help you get started, heres La Varda!

A single ring should last longer than a double/triple setup as theres no shifting going on. for the price id not worry about wear

or go and see the same tour in Europe, mix it with a city break and pay less than half what you do here for a ticket

Just put some SKS race blades on and have done with it, they keep you dry enough, and if its wet the chances are its coming from the sky so you are going to get wet in any case

I was going to say have a look at the new KTM, then stumbled on this which i thought was a good summary and explanation of the whole disc movement

http://www.bikesoup.com/magazine/buyers-guide-best-disc-road-bikes-2015

It happened at a race once at Eston on the NAMBS i think, he got a good shoeing!

I’ve been thinking just the same, ditch the triple for a single. What are you running? Ideally I’d want a fat thin and clutch mech but I’m still 9 speed shimano, what are the pull ratios on road levers? Same as MTB? Or is a clutch mech necessary? Sounds like some of you have single rings with no clutch or fat thin.